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Flower power as human cancer cells compete with normal cells

Cells compete for survival during development. It emerges that mammalian cells on a path to form a tumour express specific versions of the protein Flower when they vie for survival with surrounding normal cells.
  1. Yasuyuki Fujita

    1. Yasuyuki Fujita is at the Institute for Genetic Medicine, Hokkaido University, Hokkaido 060-0815, Japan.

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In multicellular organisms, cells usually communicate with each other in a peaceful manner. But harmony is shattered if abnormal cells appear and battle for space and survival with normal cells in a process called cell competition. This process was identified in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster1, and it also occurs in mammals2. When cancer starts to form in mammals, competition occurs between normal cells and those on a path to tumour formation, but how the molecular differences between such cells trigger cell competition is poorly understood. Writing in Nature, Madan et al.3 report that whether competing mammalian cells win such a battle depends on which version of a membrane protein called Flower they express.

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Nature 572, 181-182 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02161-y

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